Friday, February 16th, 2007...1:00 pm

Birds birds birds

Birds are nothing new to grape growers at harvest time. As soon as we get veraison (the grapes begin to change colour) the birds begin to take great interest in the vineyard. We employ four people in the vinyard solely for scaring birds away.

Kakai is about to throw a stone at a bird.

The bird scarers are here for the two months preceeding harvest and spend their days whistling and yelling at the birds, throwing stones into the canopy to get the birds out and up and away.

Seiyia is having a quiet word with a bird this morning. “You can have just a few!”

The verasion is not even across the vineyard but by the beginning of March we should have the sugars up to a good level and hope to be able to harvest. We have had more rain this year than normal and we have been fortunate not to have had any mildew on the grapes as we would have lost the harvest totally through splitting. It will however mean that we will not have as good sugar concentrations as we had last year. Last year at this time we were in a bad drought and were worried that we would lose the vines.